When I Dissolve
The power of a soundtrack is to not only support the film's narrative, but to open up spaces beyond the visible - to add layers of meaning and complexity that can easily unfold in sound.
"I like to think of the music as a sort of bog or swamp landscape that lies underneath the film's structure, all connected - sometimes you just see the surface and it can look very unassuming, until you dip your foot in. Then you dive down all the way, and there's a whole universe where you never reach the bottom. It's a mysterious, expanding, strange world and it's my job to decide how much of it we get to hear."
When I Dissolve collects the compositions Jana Irmert created for Henrike Meyer's auto-fictional hybrid documentary To Be an Extra. The film follows the filmmaker herself as she navigates the struggles of making her first feature length film while working as an extra on tv shows and film sets. From her perspective as an out-of-focus extra, she gains a new existential insight into the precarious life on the fringes of both the film industry and society.
Informed by the two artists' conversations about phenomena at the periphery of our existence like black holes, breathing rooms and body parts that suddenly feel disconnected, ominous noises grow out of the silence into blooming synth-heavy montages.
Here, the score stands on its own, a journey to the edges of our multiple realities.
Highlighting the immersive and multi-layered character of the music, the release is additionally available in Dolby Atmos, mixed by Philipp Rumsch.
Produced, mixed and performed by Jana Irmert
Mastered by Philipp Rumsch
Dolby Atmos Mix and Master by Philipp Rumsch
Artwork by Julie Calbert
©2024 Fabrique Records
"Jana Irmert invites us to linger in the liminal, to embrace the eerie quiet of existence’s margins. It’s a bold, unsettling, and ultimately transcendent work that redefines the boundaries of film music and sound art. This album reminds us that the most profound insights regularly emerge from the periphery."
"Irmert's music follows a compelling pattern, developing subtle effects into soundscapes of increasing intensity - pulsing low-end frequencies, stabs of static, bulbous synth structures, pattering rain - to either underscore or expand on the weight and emptiness of the scenes. The film reframes the music and the music opens wide the subtext of the film.
Removed from this context, the compositions remain just as effective, but find a more meditative tone in place of the film's anxious rumination on precarity. Despite the fragmented nature of its pieces and heavy ambient coding reminiscent of Perila, When I Dissolve genuinely works as a standalone, well-rounded album. And to fully enjoy Irmert's sound design acumen - easily heard even in stereo - it might be worth seeking out
the Dolby Atmos mastered version."
"An album that rains sounds on you. They crackle and warp and cover you in auditory bliss. What a fantastic album this is! Expertly crafted noises and melodic segments that dance and swirl in every direction, and fill your senses when they cross over. Captivating from beginning to end, and a real triumph for Jana. It’s so good!"
"On seeing the invisible much has been written. Perceiving? To intuit? Perhaps. Certainly this music, soundtrack to Henrike Meyer's meta-documentary To Be an Extra, is well suited, however, to commenting on our dreams, representing unconscious, invisible spaces. Splinters of proto-existence, imaginary explorations of border areas, plastic if evanescent electroacoustic mists, enveloped in one of the most noble and innovative contemporary electronic representations.
Apt, then, is the title: for here we wish to celebrate ephemeral thought, as an artistic signifier, which ceases its existence by dissolving in the very instant of figurative representation. Truly a memorable album."